Inflation in China and Japan and maybe soon in US after QE2 , rates will have to go up, and of course inflation is bad , but inflation affects you differently if you are good with your money and pay off your debt.
I wanted to add that Maxa Financial just went through a major banking conversion to improve their system for customers, you can do a lot more now, I bought GIC's with Maxa recently and have beeen very happy with service and rates::cool: